Research in Visual Arts Education - The National Society for ...

ISSUES IN VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION
Multimodal teaching and learning
Eisner’s vision is shared by many educators these days, some of whom are
advocating what Gunther Kress and co-workers (2006) at the University of
London call multimodal teaching and learning. According to these scholars,
learning involves the transformation of information across different communicative
systems (“modes”), e.g. from speech to image. In an official
report on teacher training, published by the Swedish Government (SOU
1999:63), the commissioners say that all teachers should be familiar with
aesthetics, defined as “knowledge received by the senses”. Children and
youth should be offered the opportunity, they propose, “to reflect upon,
analyse, demonstrate, and express what they know in various ways through
different ‘languages’” (p. 56).
Anders Marner (2005; Marner & Örtegren, 2003) applies socio-cultural
and semiotic theories to confront the verbalism in school with the multimodality
in media and the multicultural society in which we live. Lena
Aulin-Gråhamn, Magnus Persson and Jan Thavenius (2004) criticize a “modest
aesthetics”, characterized by the distribution of “good” art and engaging
students in so-called free creative expression. This approach, they believe,
has kept the arts out of the way of the more controversial issues that are
dealt with in a “radical aesthetics”, characterized by a critical inquiry into
big issues. In an elaborate argument, they focus on “integrating the visual
arts in the curriculum”.
Arthur Efland (2002) reminds us that “works of art are almost always
about something else other than art (…) it is also a reflection of the times
and culture from which it came, and the understanding of such a work means
seeing it in relation to the world that gave rise to it” (p. 132). However, since
an aesthetic medium is not a neutral carrier of a message, Iworld add that art
education has to be about art, too. Even if the medium is not the message,
as Marshall McLuhan (2003) would have it, it is far more than a carrier or
projection screen (cf. Marner & Örtegren, 2003).
Educational assessment
Educational assessment in visual arts education has been a controversial issue.
When the National Test was introduced in the Netherlands a couple
of decades ago at upper secondary school level, some art teachers feared
that “the introduction of objectives, norms and criteria will kill creativity,
enthusiasm and motivation; it will reduce art to just another academic exercise”
(Schönau, 1996, p. 157). Similar protests had been raised among teachers in
England some ten years earlier than in the Netherlands (Steers, 1996).
22 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION